Still, Happy Lunar New Year?with POMOCHI

Hey Dear blogger Friends, do you know that the traditional lunar new year celebration actually last for the whole week ?!?! and you have every reason to celebrate it till the Lunar Jan 15th    So today I am gonna make another traditional Chinese New Year food. The Chinese name is called ” Nian Gao” , which literally means ” higher every year”. In Japanese, this kind of food is called ” Mochi”.

So what the heck is POMOCHI????

haha, it’s POM + Mochi = POMOCHI!!! (since POM + Nian Gao = POMIANGAO…..that’s doesn’t sounds very appealing to me:-P , thus I am gonna adopt Japanese way of Nian Gao) .

making POMOCHI is a lot of fun. Because the main ingredient is the glutinous rice….you got an extremely sticky dough to play with. That reminds me of the time spent with my Mom making them several years ago!!!!

I made a black sesame filling POMOCHI. The ingredients are : 1 cup of glutinous rice flour, about 1/4 cup of POM juice , grind black sesame, coconut oil from coco (thank you!) , coconut flakes,  sweet-scented osmanthus, and a about 1 tsp of sugar.

For the glutinous dough: mix the POM and 1 cup of rice flour. See that nice cute pinky color??? I fall in love with it instantly!!! Steam them for about 10 minutes , and cool it down completely.

For the fillings : mix 1/4 cup of grind black sesame, 1 tsp of coconut oil, 1/2 tsp of osmanthus, and  1 tsp of sugar. Stir till they become little sticky crumbles.

Now comes the tricky part: making the mochi. Some tips I just find ( didn’t realize it was so difficult when I made them with Mom!!!

1. spray some oil on your hand ( yes!!) it makes the dough less sticky to your hand and easy to round it up.

2. make a ping-pong sized ball first, then “dig” a small hole for the filling (please don’t be greedy in terms of fillings…) , and seal the top. Then start to roll the dough in your hand till its really round and smooth.

Great Pinky POMOCHI already!!!

yes its ready to eat. But I would like to add more Chinese flavor:

Dip the pinky into a bowl of unsweetened coconut flakes. sprinkle some osmanthus for garnish

coconut flavor crust, sweet scented osmanthus, nutty, delicate crunchiness from black sesame fillings, and POM rice dough. Oh.that makes my day much better. Enjoy , and again, and still, happy Lunar New year!!